Obsession
by The You of Yesterday
Summary: While treating Kakashi, Sakura discovers her old sensei is more human & more fragile than she had ever realised, & becomes curious about him. But Sakura doesn't do things by halves, & when curiosity turns to obsession she risks more than just her pride.
1. Revelation

_**Obsession**_

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><p><em>1. Revelation<em>

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><p>Sakura had never seen her old sensei look so vulnerable before. Sure, she had seen him exhaust himself in battle more than once, but even then he had always remained somehow calm and in control of the situation even if he could hardly move. This was the first time she had seen him as a 'patient', rather than as an 'injured team leader', and the difference was startling.<p>

She was on duty in the hospital's emergency unit when he was brought in, and it had taken a few minutes for her to register the fact that the man on the trolley was Kakashi-sensei.

He had looked smaller without his usual bulky vest and baggy shirt, and he looked much younger than Sakura had presumed he was. The most disturbing thing for Sakura was that he looked just like many other patients she treated every day; just another seriously injured young shinobi fighting for his life.

Sakura realised with some surprise that he was firstly, a man, and secondly, he was pretty young. She had never really viewed Kakashi as a man before, and she hadn't truly considered his age either. He had always just been simply 'Kakashi-sensei', a strange, ageless, timeless, seemingly indestructible ninja who always brought his team back home safely.

Coming out of her momentary reverie, Sakura tried to force herself to spring back into professional mode, but it wasn't easy.

One of the nurses was pulling off Kakashi-sensei's hitae-ate to make him more comfortable, and after laying it on a small trolley beside her she pushed his floppy silver hair back off his forehead, checking for any hidden head wounds.

Sakura stared.

She touched her own brow absently as she looked at Kakashi-sensei's broad, wide forehead, usually kept covered by either his headband or his hair. It was so similar to her own brow, which she had been teased mercilessly about as a little girl.

She wondered if he had always hidden it to avoid being poked fun at, as she had done before Ino had taken her under her wing and persuaded her to show it off.

It made her wonder why he hid herself from the world. She looked down at him again. Why did Kakashi-sensei hide this slender, muscular body beneath layers of loose clothing? And why on earth did he hide his face?

She began to wonder for the first time if there was more to these masks than she had always assumed. Perhaps he didn't just do it to annoy everyone after all, but rather because he had some fundamental insecurities about his appearance. He had obviously never had a friend like Ino-pig.

Sakura finished treating a major stab wound to Kakashi-sensei's stomach, and once she was satisfied that all his critical injuries had been treated and his other injuries were being suitably dealt with, she made her way to the head of the operating table and pushed her sensei's hair back from his forehead as the nurse had done.

She took in his face. Black mask that she didn't dare to touch, closed eyes, left one struck through with an old scar. Just like so much else about her sensei, Sakura had never examined that scar closely before, but she'd always assumed it had been caused by a downward stroke. Now, close-up, she could clearly see that the slash that had caused that scar had been an upward stroke. It ran from below the line of the mask to cut through Kakashi's silver brow line, and it had evidently been far more vicious than Sakura could have imagined. She traced a finger over that eyebrow, shuddering slightly as she felt an indentation where the blow had actually chipped through the brow bone, and followed the scar down over his eye. The lid fluttered delicately under her touch, and she could vividly imagine the eye being sliced through, knowing the feel of an eyeball under a blade from her medical training with cadavers. Her left eye squeezed itself shut on instinct, and she felt a sudden rush of sympathy towards her sensei.

Strangely enough, Sakura had not thought about the injury that had caused Kakashi to lose his own eye, and how painful it must have been. He was just 'Kakashi-sensei' and he had come with a scar over his left eye. To her shame she hadn't considered how the actual injury might have occurred, nor how he had acquired the Sharingan which lay beneath that tissue-paper thin eyelid. She now found herself wondering how old he had been when it happened, and could picture him stoically taking the blow and carrying on the fight.

Then there was that forehead. Perhaps Kakashi didn't care about it and had never been ridiculed for it, but somehow Sakura felt that he did care. There must be reason he kept so much of himself hidden, both physically and emotionally.

That wide, high forehead, so similar to her own, was what Sakura kept coming back to. It was representative of so much more. She had been so blind. How had she missed, through all the years she had know Kakashi-sensei; beneath the masks and his legendary status, he was just as human and just as fragile as she was.

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><p><strong><em>Note:<em>**

_And so begins a little tale involving the lovely Sakura and her ex-sensei Kakashi._

_I must warn you, most dear and appreciated readers, that this will be a well-behaved story, and there will not be any of 'that sort if thing' going on around here; no hanky-panky going on behind the bike sheds, so to speak. Not on your nellie._

_I only bring this up now so as not to disappoint anyone who might be looking to read a story containing 'that sort of thing'._

_Thank you so much for reading this, and I hope you enjoyed this, short as it is._

_I would love it so much if anyone fancies sticking around for Chapter 2, titled Awakening, in which Kakashi will wake up._

_Ta muchly, and I hope to see you soon for tea (there will be scones...!)._

_Toodle-pip chaps and chapesses,_

**_The You of Yesterday_**


	2. Awakening

_Note:_

Thank you to the fabulous anon. reviewer Katana-kun who said such lovely things about Chapter 1! I'm ok with stalkers... *laughs nervously and backs away*

I hope that this next part doesn't disappoint anyone!

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><p><strong>Obsession<strong>

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><p><em>2. Awakening<em>

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><p>As Sakura stroked Kakashi's impossibly thick, silky hair, his eyes flickered open. She froze, embarrassed, and withdrew her hand.<p>

He looked dazed and in pain, which wasn't surprising. Yet somehow, because that look was in Kakashi-sensei's eyes, which were usually so firm and resolute, Sakura was surprised to see it there.

"Sakura?" he gasped out as his eyes - both of them - focused on her face. She smiled at him a little bit. "Yes, Kakashi-sensei" she answered softly. He started trying to sit up, and she placed a hand gently but firmly on his chest to keep him lying down. "Just keep still for now."

She watched him as his eyes flicked frantically from side to side, looking for something.

"My team?" Kakashi just about managed to speak between laboured breaths, his eyes managing to lock onto Sakura's face again for a second before moving again, darting around the room, searching, looking.

Sakura had no idea what had happened to his team, or even if anyone else had been brought in with him. She was a little at a loss as to what to tell him, but one of the nurses came up behind her, placing a hand on Sakura's arm.

"If I may, Sakura-san?" she enquired politely. Sakura nodded her assent and took a step back.

The nurse stepped right up beside Kakashi and leaned over him to try to get his panicked eyes to focus on her.

"You had three teammates with you?"

Kakashi didn't respond, and in fact didn't seem to have heard the question, as his eyes were still searching desperately, and his head swivelling from side to side.

The nurse sighed and took his face between her hands, stilling his head and turning it gently but firmly towards her to capture his gaze with her own.

When he seemed a little calmer, the nurse tried again.

"You had three teammates, Kakashi-san?"

After a moment, he nodded that he did, and the nurse continued.

"Three Konoha shinobi came into the Village with you. They are all fine. Two were uninjured, and the third is being treated for a broken leg. They are all fine. Do you understand me, Kakashi-san?"

The nurse repeated herself and held his face firmly as she awaited his confirmation, as his eyes had wandered and he was starting to struggle a bit in her grasp. He eventually gave another nod to confirm that he had heard and understood, and the nurse released his face and he relaxed in an instant, his eyes drifting closed as he seemed to fall asleep.

Sakura recognised this behaviour from her experience with Kakashi on missions. He would somehow manage to remain upright and functioning until he knew his teammates would be alright, before letting his exhaustion overtake him. He would then usually either fall flat on his face or, if he was already sitting down, would announce that he couldn't get up. Adrenaline is a marvellous thing, Sakura thought.

She sighed and went back to dressing Kakashi's numerous smaller wounds that she hadn't deemed necessary to treat with chakra. Most of the lacerations on his upper body had been taken care of by the nurses, and his chest and arms were already swathed in bandages, so Sakura focused on one of Kakashi's legs, while the nurse who had just explained the situation with Kakashi's team worked on his other leg.

Sakura wondered how on earth he had managed to get so many small wounds. It looked like he had been dragged through a tangle of barbed wire, he had so many untidy little cuts all over his body. The strangest thing was that his clothes hadn't been ripped at all. Perhaps he had changed into a spare set after acquiring these wounds, Sakura theorised. But that must have been before he was stabbed, as the large wound in his abdomen had gone through his uniform.

She pondered this for a while, but realised she would have to wait to ask him what had happened. There was little chance of getting it out of his team when the information wasn't crucial to treating him, so she would just have to sweet-talk Kakashi into giving her mission details if she was still curious when he woke up.

She finished wrapping his left leg and as the nurse was also done she pulled a sheet over her sensei's body to give him some measure of dignity while being wheeled through the hospital corridors to a room he could recover in, before going to make sure that a room was being prepared to her satisfaction.

Sakura wanted to make sure Kakashi was given a private room with a view over the Village, as he was sure to be stuck there for quite some time. She inspected all the available rooms, and selected one at the very corner of the building on the third floor, which had only one bed and windows in two of its walls. It was a lovely, bright room, as far as hospital rooms went, and was much nicer than the others, Sakura thought. She knew she shouldn't really use her position at the hospital to benefit her friends over other patients, but Kakashi's condition was serious after all, and he was going to be there for a lot longer than most other patients, given that he had exhausted all of his chakra again.

Sakura knew Kakashi had much lower chakra reserves than other shinobi of his level, and in fact, he had lower reserves than a majority of chunin, but surely he didn't have to push himself so hard quite so often.

Sakura sighed as she and two nurses brought her sensei into the room and settled him in the bed. Dismissing them both with a smile and a sincere 'thank you', Sakura hooked up the monitors and tubes that would take care of Kakashi for a while, and closed the curtains with a last glance out of the window at the sun beginning to set over the Village.

She had wanted her sensei to have the best possible room because he always gave so much of himself for Konoha, and he gave it without hesitation. She thought her shishou often treated him unnecessarily harshly when he was injured, but she was of the opinion that he should receive only the best treatment no matter what his condition in return for his work.

She smiled, turning to study Kakashi. He was a bit like Naruto in that respect. Both of them would happily sacrifice themselves for their teammates without even thinking about it. Well, Naruto would sacrifice himself for a total stranger if they spun him a convincing sob-story, but that wasn't the point. She chuckled softly, wondering what Kakashi and Naruto would say if she told them she thought they were similar. Naruto would probably protest and say he was "nothing like that pervert" while simultaneously swelling with pride. Kakashi would probably just say "hmm" and pretend not to care - a sure sign that he actually did care a great deal.

Sakura decided to stay with Kakashi. Her shift had ended while she had been healing him, and she was free to go home, but she had nothing planned. She also had three days off in a row after this, so it didn't matter if she missed some sleep. She had a lovely long weekend to spend in bed if she wanted to. Kakashi-sensei should have someone there when he woke up, she thought, and there didn't seem to be anyone else who cared enough to stick around.

Thinking back to Kakashi's past stays in the hospital, Sakura could recall some of the other jounin popping by to poke gentle fun at him once he was awake, but that was about it in the way of visitors. Even Gai only tended to visit him a couple of times, usually coming in to wail about his rival's lost youthfulness or some nonsense, or to issue another ridiculous challenge, and he never stayed long. Sakura didn't blame them. She guessed that, thanks to the war they had all lived through, the older generation of shinobi were just more accustomed to one of their number being injured in battle, and it was no big deal to them. But for Sakura and her group - the one-time 'Rookie Nine' - being injured badly enough to warrant an extended hospital stay was a huge deal, and they would all make sure to visit their injured friend as often as possible.

It was just a different way of looking at things, Sakura supposed, and could be put down to contrasting experiences. She could still count on one hand the number of occasions she had been wounded in a fight beyond very minor wounds, and it was the same for most of her friends, save perhaps Naruto. But then he was usually fully -healed by the time they got home thanks to the Kyuubi, so it wasn't really the same. She knew many of the elite of Kakashi and Gai's generation were so accustomed to sustaining heavy damage in battle, that it was no rarity for them to drag themselves home from a fight carrying wounds that should have killed them, only to insist that they were fine and refuse hospital treatment. Sakura had been told that Kakashi-sensei was like that as well, or at least he had been before he became a jounin-sensei. Since Sakura had known Kakashi he had never put up a fight about staying in hospital, but she thought that probably had more to do with the fact that she had only ever seen him admitted for chakra depletion, when he was either unconscious or barely able to move.

Well, Kakashi was a part of her world as well as the rather harsh world of the past, and Sakura didn't have to treat him the same way his contemporaries did. He was a person who didn't let many people get close to him, and that made Sakura feel sad. He had never intentionally revealed anything about himself to his team in all the years they had been working together. It had been almost ten years now, Sakura realised with mild surprise, since she and the others had graduated from the Academy and met their jounin-sensei for the first time. Kakashi had purposefully given away nothing about himself at their first meeting, and Sakura knew barely any more about him now. And what little she did know had come from other sources. Naruto had told her that Kakashi's father had been the White Fang, and had plied her with questions about that famous hero that Kakashi had apparently evaded when the loudmouth had asked him about the subject. Naruto had only learned that much thanks to Chiyo-sama's crazy attack on Kakashi when they had first arrived in Suna that memorable time five years ago. That had come as a bit of strange blow to both Sakura and Naruto, as they realised for the first time the seemingly obvious fact that their sensei had a father. It was Naruto who had mentioned it to her during their stay in Sunagakure no Sato. She recalled her teammate saying that this small piece of information had suddenly made Kakashi-sensei seem human. Naruto had told Sakura how, from then on, he had felt protective over Kakashi-sensei, particularly when he unveiled his Mangekyou Sharingan for the first time while chasing down Deidara. Naruto had said that he had actually felt the need to reassure Kakashi that it was okay if the technique didn't work perfectly. Sakura hadn't felt quite the same way, but she had definitely started to see her sensei in a different light, and that mission to retrieve Gaara had marked the beginning of her friendship with Kakashi.

From Tsunade Sakura had learned that Kakashi's sharingan had come from his Uchiha teammate, and she had been curious enough to do a little digging on his old team to discover that Uchiha Obito had been killed in action in the Third Shinobi War, aged only fourteen. Sakura, having been sixteen when she discovered this, had been shocked to realise how many young kids had fought and died in the wars of the past. Of course, she had known the facts from her history lessons at the Academy, but to actually be able to connect those history-book shinobi with her very own sensei threw an entirely different light on it all. She had somehow never made the connection between Kakashi and the two heroes who had emerged from the famous battle at the Kannabi Bridge, "each with his own sharingan", to quote the legend. She had just assumed, without realising it, that these two heroes had been adults not children. The history books made it all seem so far in the past, lost back in the mists of an unreachable time long before anyone Sakura knew had been around. Discovering that Kakashi was one of those two heroes had amazed her, but she had been more amazed by just how young he had been.

Tsunade had told her casually that Kakashi had become an active shinobi at five and a chuunin at six, so to be a jounin by thirteen wasn't really that surprising, but Sakura thought she was being a bit harsh. Her shishou always seemed to act that way towards Kakashi for some reason, as though his achievements were no big deal and he had somehow failed to meet her expectations of him. Other shinobi seemed to receive accolades and decorations for less than some of the acts of bravery Sakura had witnessed from Kakashi-sensei. Yet in all the time she had known him she had not once seen him receive praise from the Hokage, much less anything official. Perhaps he had refused to accept anything? She didn't know, but whatever the case, it puzzled her somewhat.

She turned back to look at Kakashi. He looked pale and small lying there all bandaged up in the bed, nothing like a legendary shinobi from the history books, and the sight stirred something within her. Something protective and even motherly, she thought. Her eyes were moving up and down his body, studying him, when Sakura noticed blood leaking through the bandages on his left hand and approached the bed to check the wound. As she unwound the bandages Sakura realised she had never actually seen Kakashi-sensei's hands before as he always wore those fingerless armoured gloves. Yet another part of him that she was seeing for the first time.

His hand was surprisingly small and slender, not really much larger than her own hand. Removing the gauze from the bloodied area, Sakura saw that the wound - a nasty deep cut through the heel of the hand - was more serious than had evidently been thought by one of the nurses, so she used her medical ninjutsu to stop the bleeding. She swabbed off the blood, preparing to re-bandage the hand as she hadn't healed the cut completely. But when the the last of the blood had been wiped away, Sakura gasped. On the hand was one of the most horrible scars she had ever seen. A messy, uneven patch of skin marred Kakashi's pale hand, but it was the implications of the scar that set her mind reeling. Turning the hand over, Sakura's worst fear was confirmed. There was a matching scar on the palm, jagged and angry.

To affirm her initial thoughts, Sakura ran some chakra into the scar to feel the shape and size of the scar tissue beneath the surface, and the feeling of it left her in no doubt as to what had caused it. The only way to cause a wound like that was to nail a person up by their hands and leave them to hang there for an extended period. The damage that she felt inside the hand could only have been caused through the application of a large amount of pressure to whatever had impaled it; pressure caused by something such as the dead weight of about 75 kilos hanging from that single point on each hand. She couldn't prevent a tear from falling as she imagined the horror Kakashi must have been through, and Sakura bent and kissed her sensei's hand lightly, right on the scar.

She didn't understand why he would keep these hidden. To her they stood as marks of his dedication to Konoha, and of his unwavering loyalty to the Village. Sakura didn't doubt for a millisecond that Kakashi would have kept his mouth shut even when being crucified. She might not know much about his past, but she knew his character well enough to know he was absolutely, unshakeably loyal to the Village.

She kissed the scar again, but felt a distinctly uneasy sensation as she did so. It was almost as though she were being watched...

Turning her head slowly to the right, Sakura realised that Kakashi was awake and watching her, his dark eye open and the sharingan firmly closed. His breathing hadn't changed, and his heart was still beating at the same steady rate as it had in sleep. Perhaps he had been awake for a while...

Sakura straightened up, blushing, and smiled at him nervously.

"Ah, Kakashi-sensei" she sniggered a bit. "I didn't expect you to wake up so soon! I mean, when did you wake up? Er... how are you feeling?" she blundered to a halt, blushing furiously, unable to look him in the eye.

Why had she done something as stupid and embarrassing as that? She should have known he would catch her in the act, dammit! How the hell was she going to explain her way out of this, Sakura wondered, feeling very foolish under her sensei's dark gaze, and knowing she was probably in for a good amount of teasing.

She scratched at her cheek nervously. "Ah, heh heh heh heh..."


	3. Research

**Obsession**_  
><em>

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><p><em>3. Research<em>

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><p>"It really looks as though you didn't expect me to wake up so soon." Kakashi's voice was hoarse and quiet, but Sakura could still detect a hint of mischief in his tone, and one silver eyebrow was raised in amusement. "I've been awake since you moved me to this room, Sakura-chan." At this Sakura blushed even redder, trying to remember if she had said anything aloud when she'd presumed him to be asleep. "And I feel..." Kakashi paused, probably considering whether to tell the truth or not, Sakura thought. "Fine, all things considered" he finished brightly, creasing his eyes in his indication of a too-happy smile. Sakura knew he had opted for the lie. There was no way he felt fine so soon after surgery.<p>

"I'm sorry, Kakashi-sensei" she began, "I..."

"Don't worry, Sakura" Kakashi cut in. "I wont mention it again." His expression was deadly serious now. Sakura felt a little disappointed. She wanted to ask him about so much, but it didn't seem appropriate now that he had just made it fairly plain that he didn't want to discuss it. But what the hell. He had just caught her kissing his hand damn it, and he hadn't reacted in any way really, so she decided to try her luck.

"Kakashi-sensei, I appreciate that you don't want to embarrass me, but I really would like to talk about it if it's okay with you."

He sighed deeply, sounding so tired that Sakura felt bad instantly and wished she hadn't decided to push the issue.

"Sakura, I don't feel up to much, but please, talk away." Kakashi looked as exhausted as he sounded, and his eyes were flitting closed every few seconds, but Sakura wasn't about to decline his offer. She could talk, and maybe it would help him to get some sleep, even if he didn't give her the answers she wanted. She drew in a deep breath.

"Okay, Kakashi-sensei" she paused, unsure how best to phrase what she wanted to say. "Your hands..." she began, then stopped. "Why do you hide? You hide so much from usual." Sakura looked down at the hand she was still holding, and began to stroke it absently as she spoke.

"I've always seen you as just 'Kakashi-sensei' until now. I don't know if that makes any sense to you at all. But seeing you today, I think I'm noticing for the first time that you are as human and vulnerable as the rest of us."

She paused and quickly flicked her eyes to his face to gauge his reaction. He was watching her, although his eye kept wandering.

To her surprise, he took the opportunity to speak. "And why would you think that, Sakura?" he said, sounding a little bit more mischievous again. Sakura hesitated, unsure whether to say more. Although she and Kakashi had become good friends over the years, she couldn't read or predict his moods. as they could change so quickly and seemingly did so on a whim. She wasn't sure if Kakashi ever revealed how he was really feeling.

"_Just __tell __him __about __the __forehead __thing__, __dammit__!_" Inner Sakura screamed, and Sakura pretty much agreed with her inner self, so she went on.

"Well, you've always kept your forehead covered up, and it never crossed my mind before, but today I saw that you have a... a forehead like mine." Sakura stammered slightly. It sounded so stupid, saying it out loud, but she had come too far no to back down.

"I couldn't help but wonder if you were teased about it as well. And then I noticed this scar on your hand. It could only be one thing that caused this..."

She picked up the hand and waved it about a little as she spoke.

"Ow, Sakura!" Kakashi screwed his eyes up in pain and she realised she was hurting him.

"Sorry, Kakashi-sensei. I forgot about your shoulder" Sakura winced inwardly as Kakashi sighed and closed his eyes, and Sakura wasn't sure he was about to speak at all. She thought she had lost him now, and was a little bit relieved that he seemed to have been distracted by the pain. But then he spoke again, his voice weary and without a hint of mischief.

"Sakura, I am just as flawed and human as anyone else. I'm sorry you had a hard time when you were younger, but I didn't get teased about my forehead. Perhaps I hide because I don't want to ruin the illusion; I have a reputation to uphold after all. Is that all, Sakura? I'm really tired." He didn't open his eyes at all while he spoke, and Sakura was certain he was trying to be evasive, although he obviously wasn't lying about how tired he was, so she decided to let it go for now, but this was far from over.

Sakura checked her sensei over and then left him to rest, planning to return in the morning to both make sure he was recovering well, even though she had the day off, and to try to prise a little more out of him. The trouble was, Kakashi had a way of making her feel very small, as though she was a silly twelve-year-old genin again, and she had trouble pushing on through it to get at what she wanted. He knew exactly how best to embarrass her into giving up on a line of questioning, and it irked her that he knew her so well while she knew so little about him.

She smiled to herself as she left the room; but he had said he wasn't teased about his forehead. Sakura was sure he was lying, and felt happy that she had finally found something in common with Kakashi after all this time. Even if it wasn't the most positive thing, it was an experience they had shared before they had met each other, and seemed to Sakura to be a window onto the past of this man who she had known for almost half her life and called her friend, but who she knew so little about.

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><p>Sakura had every intention of going straight home from the hospital, but as she walked through the Village towards the house she had grown up in, and where she still lived with her mother, her mind dwelt on the mystery that was Kakashi-sensei. She found herself wondering how he had grown up to become the man she knew. Well, okay she didn't really 'know' him, but she was familiar with him. Perhaps that was a better way of putting it, she thought. Where was his family home? Where were his parents? She knew his father had been the legendary White Fang and that he was long dead, but what of his mother and any other family? How had his father died and how had it affected Kakashi? What had he been like as a child at the Academy? How had he acquired the sharingan - Sakura knew it wasn't his natural eye as she had seen his old genin team photo in his apartment - and how had he made his name as a legend in his own right? She was also interested in the medical aspects of such a transplant, and that threw up a whole slew of questions on that side of it alone. What was his history in the ANBU, and just how strong was he really? Sakura was sure she had never seen the full extent of his power and skill. Whenever she had stood with him in battle, their opponents had without exception recognised him and shown some sort of fear or apprehension over facing him. Was Kakashi-sensei really so frightening that he inspired those reactions in even hardened and incredibly powerful missing nin like the Akatsuki had been? How had he come to be tortured and how had he come out of it seemingly so well? Sakura had seen shinobi who had been freed from torture - she had treated several of them - and while their physical wounds could be healed, many of them ended up in desk jobs or took early retirement as their emotional and psychological wounds never completely healed. Others would seem okay on the surface, and would continue on active duty until they fell apart in the field, endangering their missions and comrade. Sakura wondered how long it had been since Kakashi had been captured, but she couldn't help but feel he was hiding his pain rather than trying to deal with it.<p>

She had so many questions running through her head, and so many speculative answers running alongside them, that she walked around the Village twice before deciding that she simply wouldn't be able to sleep that night without getting at least some of the answers.

She debated briefly with herself before concluding that it was perfectly reasonable for her to sneak into the restricted section of her shishou's archive where the confidential ANBU military and medical records were kept.

And she continued to tell herself that it was okay to do this as she quickly scanned the rows of files for her sensei's records. The ANBU records were kept in the Hokage's office, in the same small library that housed Tsunade-sama's extensive collection of medical texts, and which Sakura had been granted free access to for research purposes.

She quickly found the medical file she was after. It was the thickest one on the shelves, and this surprised her as she couldn't remember Kakashi having been in the hospital many times since she had known him, and then he was usually admitted for chakra exhaustion rather than injuries. Just as she was about to slip the hefty file into her bag, Sakura's eye was caught by the large gap on the shelf where the file had been. If Shizune or Tsunade-sama came in here they would be sure to notice its absence immediately. She sighed, realising she would have to take the file in shifts. But then she noticed something else that surprised her. Next to the large space on the shelf sat another, slimmer file also marked 'Hatake Kakashi', obviously a newer volume, started when the original file simply couldn't take any more additions. Her eyes widened, as she wondered in awe just what he had been through.

Glancing around to ensure she was still alone, Sakura grabbed a wadge of papers from the front of the thick file, and dumped it back on the shelf, shoving the loose sheets quickly inside a medical text she had taken as cover if anyone did come in. Thinking fast, she hurried to the photocopier, whipped out the papers and shoved them into the feed tray, pressing the copy button while looking over her shoulder at the door leading to the Hokage's office. It had occurred to her that, particularly with Kakashi being in the hospital at the moment, Tsunade or Shizune might pull his file for some reason, and she couldn't risk them noticing the missing pages. Taking copies also meant that Sakura could take her time reading them.

She stowed the copies in her bag and replaced the originals in the hefty file. Now she just had to find his shinobi record, as she wanted to read everything chronologically, so she could match up his mission records with his medical history.

The military files were held in a separate section across the room from the medical files, and this time, Kakashi's file wasn't on the selves at all. In it's place was a card which noted that the file was in Storage Box 14.

Sakura frowned, but quickly located Box 14 among the large storage boxes kept on their own set of shelves at one end of the narrow room. Most of these boxes held scrolls or collections of papers on a particular subject, so she was surprised to see the box marked with Kakashi's name alongside the number 14.

"The whole box?" she breathed, pulling it out onto the floor and opening the lid.

It evidently hadn't been opened in a while, as this was his ninja record it was unlikely to be needed regularly, so Sakura decided she could risk grabbing a handful of the cardboard files, which were marked with four-digit numbers. She took the four lowest-numbered files, guessing they were in some kind of order. If it hadn't been for the sheer improbability of it, Sakura would have said the numbers indicated years, but the first one would have been over 30 years ago if that were the case, and she knew Kakashi was only 35 years old.

Having gathered everything she wanted for now, Sakura closed her satchel and virtually dashed home and went straight to her room, barely acknowledging her mother on the way up the stairs. She couldn't wait to read the first of the files, and to begin unravelling the mystery of her old sensei.

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><p><em><span>Note:<span>_

_Thank you for reading, and I hope you will join me in the not-too-distant future for Chapter 4: Information._


	4. Information

_Note: Hello Marvellous People!_

_I'd like to take a moment to thank everyone who has reviewed this so far. It makes me so happy to see review in my email inbox, you would not believe..! I think I've replied to everyone to thank them, so I'd just like to extend my thanks also to two lovely anon. people out there, "Rook" and "Mwahahahaha" (good name, by the way!). _

_Rook, your comments on crucifixion were very interesting. It is indeed a very cruel practice, and disturbing to think of it still being used today. I didn't know that's where the word 'excruciating' comes from, but it makes sense really. That's very interesting, if sobering, stuff. I'm glad you like the story so far! Thank you._

_Mwahahahaha,__ just what is Kakashi worth, indeed...? He's seriously strong though, at an entirely different level to the other current jounin, __although not as strong as the Sannin (although by the current point in the manga, maybe he is that strong...?) He's certainly kage-level. If he had more chakra he'd be unstoppable. Don't worry about ranting, it's good! I like your Youthful Enthusiasm! Yosh! Thank you.  
><em>

_I'm really liking that people are interested enough to speculate about where this might be going. I did have it all figured out and written, but while I was typing up this chapter I thought of a way to make it better, as it had started to drift out of the realms of sense, and I'd left myself a whole ream of loose ends I'd brought up but hadn't tied up! So, I'm changing my original plan a little bit to give it a tad more 'ooomph' as you might say. Not that I really needed to explain this as no one knows what my original plan was anyway... but I'm just feeling conversational! :-)_

_So, I hope you enjoy this instalment as Sakura starts to delve into the murky depths of Kakashi's files..._

_(p.s. _

_Superfluous Comment of the Week:_

_I like that my spell check wants to change 'Kiba' to 'kibble' (how appropriate!), 'Hatake' to 'hatchet' and 'Neji' to 'neigh'! It just gave me a chuckle. I'm sure there's a really stupid parody in there somewhere...!)_

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><p><strong>Obsession<strong>_  
><em>

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><p><em>4. Information<em>

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><p>Sakura spent hours that night poring over the papers she had taken from her sensei's files. This was only a minute fraction of the total amount of information available to her, and Sakura felt inordinately excited at the thought of just how much she would be able to discover. She had only started to read his shinobi record and already what she had found was mind-blowing.<p>

Her idea that the numbers on the folders might be dates had seemed crazy, but it turned out to be the truth.

Kakashi-sensei had become a genin at five years old. Sakura couldn't believe that. She had tried to picture a five-year-old kid performing jutsu and fighting, but she just couldn't. The kids she knew of that age were barely coordinated enough to hold a pencil, let alone a kunai.

The earliest file contained Kakashi's initial ninja registration documents, with the obligatory photograph of him at age five. Sakura kept it to one side and kept glancing at it as she read through the reports from her sensei's first missions as a new genin.

He was so cute! She squealed over the picture several times as she glanced back at it repeatedly. It showed a perfect miniature version of Kakashi-sensei with the same wild hair, looking directly at the camera with a very serious expression on his little face. She noted sadly that he had worn a mask even at such a young age. He seemed to be aware of the gravity of becoming a ninja, and his two enormous black eyes stared out with fire and determination. Sakura thought of her own genin registration photograph. She had grinned hugely and clutched her hands together beneath her chin in her favourite 'cute' pose, the same one she had used in the Team 7 photograph. She been so embarrassed by it that she had re-taken the photograph after the chunin exams, when she had not only cut off her long hair but had also discovered the hard way what it was to be a shinobi. And it wasn't about smiles and looking cute.

She shook her head, feeling ashamed of her own naivety as she did whenever she thought about her initial attitude towards being a shinobi, and her lack of drive and seriousness. She tried not to think about her cringe-worthy obsession with Sasuke. It only made her squirm.

Looking back at the picture, she squealed again when she noticed how Kakashi's forehead protector was tied around his neck, being far too large to sit on his forehead.

She read through his registration papers, his stats and major abilities. When she came to his Academy graduation scores she gasped, staring at the paper in disbelief.

He had a perfect score in everything. At five years old.

Sakura felt so ashamed of herself when she recalled how often she had bragged about her own high scores in front of him so proud of her own intelligence, but had never thought once about how brilliant he was, or how her bragging might make him feel. She felt stupid in comparison to him.

She put down the score sheet and picked up the photograph again, scarcely able to comprehend how bright the little boy in the picture must have been to have achieved those scores. And indeed, he still was bright, she thought sadly, remembering Tsunade-sama referring to him as a genius, although she had never really noticed. He knew a lot, but he was a jounin-sensei, so he was supposed to. It had never crossed her mind that Kakashi was above average in the intelligence stakes. It was just another thing that he kept well-hidden. Another thing about him that she had taken for granted.

Setting the picture down again, Sakura moved on to look at the reports documenting the early part of her sensei's career as a genin. She chuckled a little at the thought of him catching cats and weeding gardens. He would probably have done it perfectly and without complaint, she thought, glancing back at the serious-eyed little boy he had once been. She wondered if he had been late for everything back then as a child, and what sort of person he had been. Was he moody and aloof like Sasuke, or lazily brilliant like Shikamaru, or silent and serious like Shino and Neji? She couldn't imagine him being loud and enthusiastic like Naruto, Kiba, Lee, and Konohamaru, or kind and laid back like Chouji, or studious and geeky like Udon. She hoped he had been more like Shikamaru, although something inside of her told her insistently that he had been more like Sasuke.

As she read the first mission report, Sakura was shocked again. There was no mention of the team allocation that she had expected to find and it certainly wasn't a D-rank mission report either. But then, what she found made sense when she stopped to think about it for a moment. Kakashi had become a genin two years into the Third Great Shinobi War, when the fighting had been at its peak, so it shouldn't come as such a surprise that he had been thrown straight into a battlefield unit rather than a genin team. He had been placed under the command of none other than Shikamaru's father, Nara Shikaku, himself then a young chunin-turned platoon commander. There was a brief report from Nara-san on the newly-recruited genin under his command, with a special mention of the youngest, Kakashi, and a note saying that he would be "best utilised for sabotage and infiltration operations" due to his small size and unique skill-set.

There was also a photograph of the new Nara Platoon, who had been a motley crew of about thirty shinobi of varying ages and sizes, from an old white-haired woman who had to be in her sixties down to Kakashi himself. There didn't seem to have been any sort of uniform at the time, so they were all dressed in mismatched outfits, adding to their motley appearance, with the only common factors between them being the Konoha hitae-ate they all proudly wore, and the serious, determined expression on every face in the picture.

Sakura scanned them all, not recognising anyone she knew save her sensei and Nara-san, who looked very, very young, although there was a man who was obviously a Hyuuga and a girl of about thirteen with the distinctive Inuzuka facial markings. Her gaze kept falling back to Kakashi, who stood at the front of the grouping next to Nara Shikaku. He was dressed from head to toe in black, with long arm guards up to his elbows, and he wore traditional black foot wrappings in place of the modern shinobi sandals. His black kunai holster was almost the entire length of his thigh, and a small tanto was secured at his left hip, looking like a full-sized long-sword on him. The expression on what she could see of his tiny face was absolutely cold, and his dark, bottomless eyes stared once again directly into the camera. Sakura shivered involuntarily. He was scary.

Sakura had never felt so glad that she had been born when she was. She had gone through her whole childhood in peace time, and had never known an all-out, decade-long war like the Third War. She had experienced the Fourth Great War, of course, but that had been something different. It had not been a war of attrition where nations were pitted against each other in a simple and bloody game to see who could hold out the longest, but has been short and violent, fighting against time and an inordinately powerful foe to save the world itself.

In spite of her own experience, the Konoha she saw in these photographs seemed worlds away from the Village she knew. Everyone already looked so tired and jaded, even the children, and this had only been the second year of the fighting.

Sakura sighed and moved on to the next item in the file, which was another surprise. It was a thick pack of documents held inside a blue folder marked 'Konoha Military Court'. Sakura had been planning to get a drink of tea before looking at the rest of the stuff, but her curiosity won out over her thirst and she opened the folder up. Inside were details of a case titled 'Konohagakure Shinobi Court against Konoha Shinobi Registration Numbers 005326, 005471, 007230, 008327 and 008415'.

Not understanding the relevance of this to her sensei, Sakura scanned through the file, trying to figure out what was at the heart of this case. It was mostly procedural nonsense written in legalese that she couldn't understand much of just by skim-reading it, but as she was becoming a bit impatient to know, a photograph floated out of the file and fluttered elegantly over the edge of her bed, to land face down on the floor.

Sakura picked it up and turned it over

Her hand flew to her mouth in horror at what she was seeing, and tears pricked at her eyes. She wanted to look away, but couldn't tear her eyes from them horrifying image in her hand.

It was labelled as part of the evidence in this case against the five listed shinobi, and was dated about a month after Kakashi's entry in the Nara Platoon.

In the picture, a tiny silver-haired boy lay on a low bed in what looked like a field hospital tent. He was naked apart from a pair of underpants, and almost every inch of his small thin body was covered in burns. At a glance they looked to be mostly second degree, with some areas of third degree burns where the skin looked brownish in colour. The burns covered at least sixty percent of the child's body, although his little legs looked the worst affected area. Sakura felt sick looking at the poor child, and knowing that this was her sensei. She covered her mouth and fought back the nausea she could feel rising in her throat. As a medic she had treated these kinds of burns before, and it was one of the injuries that she found hardest to deal with emotionally. Forcing herself to look back at the photo, she peered closer, taking in the fact that, along with the burns there were pieces of shrapnel embedded throughout the boy's body.

Somehow, Kakashi was still awake in the picture. She guessed it wasn't long after he had been taken to the medic station, as there a man to one side of the bed in the process of hooking up an iv line. Kakashi's large eyes were wide and frightened, but his jaw was set with a grim determination that simply didn't belong on the face of a five-year-old boy.

"Kakashi-sensei..." Sakura whispered sadly, unable to keep her tears back any longer. Barely a month into his shinobi career Kakashi had already been hurt this badly. It just wasn't fair, she thought. This was far more than any child should have to withstand, and given the thickness of his medical file, and the numerous scars covering his body, this was far from being his only major injury.

Recalling the photocopies she had made of the medical records, Sakura dug those out of her bag, interested to find out from a professional viewpoint how the treatments had progressed, as Kakashi-sensei didn't appear to have scarring from these burns. That meant that either he was very lucky or a top-level medic had attended to him. And given the date, the only Konoha medic capable of that level of perfect healing would have been Tsunade-shishou, and Sakura was always eager to find out about her master's elusive past as well, so she would get two in one here. She could read the court room file later.

Just as she drew out the wad of papers, a quiet knock at the door announced her mother's presence. Sakura had been to wrapped up in the files that she hadn't even noticed her mother was approaching. Some jounin she was, she berated herself. As usual, her mother stuck her head around the door without waiting for an answer to her knock, and Sakura didn't have time to hide the photograph lying on the bed or wipe away her tears.

Her mother noticed instantly that she was upset, and also guessed the reason.

""Sakura love!" she exclaimed. "Are you all right?" She put a hand on Sakura's shoulder in comfort, and her eyes fell to the photograph of the injured child. "Oh Sakura. Is that one of your patients? Come here love, I know it must be hard for you." She held out her arms to her daughter, but Sakura shook her head, tempting as it was to take advantage of the proffered hug. She had never lied to her mother before, and didn't think she ever could. Restricted files or not, he mother wasn't a shinobi and didn't move in shinobi circles, so who would find out, she told herself, trying to justify what she was about to do. She needed someone to share this with.

"No mother, this isn't a patient. These are my sensei's files."

Her mother sat down on the bed and took up the photograph, studying it for a moment before she had to look away.

"Your sensei? You mean Hatake-san?" she asked, looking at Sakura, who nodded her confirmation.

"He's hurt at the moment, and I've been treating him in the hospital. I just thought I could help him better if I knew a little about his past, as he's never told us anything at all about himself. I thought looking at his records might give me a clue..." she trailed off as her nose filled up and she had to sniff. She watched her mother study the picture again, then look back up at Sakura with disbelief and sadness in her eyes.

"How did this happen?" she asked.

Sakura just said simply "the Third Shinobi War." Her mother gasped a little.

"This is a child! How did a child get caught up in the war? Tears already stood in her mother's eyes as she looked to her daughter for an answer.

"Mother, this is Kakashi-sensei when he was small. He had already been a genin for about a month at this point. He was fighting in the war."

Her mother's eyes widened in shock, and her mouth dropped open.

"Sakura. Is this what the shinobi world does to people? This is inhumane! I knew the shinobi world was harsh but this is... this is too much. I thought you and your friends were too young when you graduated, but this is just... well. I never did entirely approve of Hatake-san's methods, as I they always seemed overly-harsh, but given that this is the reality of war - the reality of the life you chose Sakura - perhaps he was right to be harsh. He didn't get the chance to chose his own path in life, and look at what he's had to suffer for it. I understand now. He wanted you to be prepared as much as is possible for the horrors you were going to have to face if you wanted to be a shinobi. If you couldn't handle the training, there was no way you'd handle the reality. That's why he failed so many teams before yours, Sakura. He didn't want them to suffer like this."

Sakura stared at her mother, as tears flowed down both of their faces. It had never crossed her mind that Kakashi-sensei had been too young to have chosen his path in life. He had effectively been forced into being a shinobi, and that made it so much worse, but also explained a lot for Sakura. He was a slave to the Village, and had been all his life. He simply didn't know how to be anything else.

She wanted to protect him, and show him what it was to really live. The little boy's sad dark eyes stared back at her from the photo in her mother's hand, and she let her tears continue to flow.

The two women spent half the night together going though the rest of the shinobi file covering the first two years of Kakashi's career, talking quietly about what they came across, and crying from time to time as they read.

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><p>And while Sakura and her mother shared a bottle of wine and pored over his past, the subject of their fascination jerked violently awake in his moonlit hospital room.<p>

"Sakura..." he whispered through parched lips, his heart rate slowing as he came down from the adrenaline rush brought on by a vivid nightmare. Everything hurt, but if she was there it would make him feel better. Her presence could chase away the nightmares and sooth him into a more peaceful sleep. But she wasn't there. She had said she wouldn't leave him, hadn't she? Or had that just been his hopeful imagination?

With a monumental effort, Kakashi raised himself up on his elbows so he could peer around the room. Sakura might be asleep somewhere out of his view. But she definitely wasn't there.

Giving up the effort, he let himself fall back to the bed. His heart ached with loneliness.

Half delirious with the pain and chakra depletion, Kakashi let out a small, strangled sob, A single tear formed in his single black eye and rolled silently down his face. He cold see it in the very bottom of his blurred vision, glistening in the silver moonlight like a diamond. It was so pretty.

A wave of pain shot through his body, probably brought on by his attempts at moving. It left him breathless and sweaty, pulse racing and body shaking all over. He couldn't even move enough to pull the cord beside the bed to summon help, so Kakashi lay awake for the rest of the night, shivering uncontrollably under the pale moonlight. His mind replayed the events of his nightmares over and over. The only thing that kept him going and part way sane was the knowledge that he would see Sakura soon. And as the first rays of morning sunlight shone in through the gap in the blinds, Kakashi eventually dropped off to sleep, utterly exhausted, but feeling happy in the knowledge that his little student would be in soon to check on him.


	5. Exposure

**Obsession**

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><p><em>5. Exposure<em>

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><p>"Tsunade-sama! Tsunade-sama!"<p>

Who the hell was calling so damn loudly at this ungodly hour of the morning? Tsunade shook her aching head and continued to look out over the Village from her office on the fifth floor of the hospital. The sun was just coming up, and the Hokage watched as the Village she loved so much was bathed in a rich golden glow. It was peaceful. The leaves were just beginning to unfurl, and the first signs that winter was finally giving way to spring were visible everywhere.

"Tsunade-sama!"

The door to the office crashed open and Tsunade turned from the peaceful view with a sigh as a young blond girl burst in. She came to an abrupt stop when she saw that Tsunade was actually in the office, hastily smoothing down her nurse's uniform and bowing.

"Oh, Hokage-sama. I'm sorry, I didn't expect to find you here."

Tsunade sighed. If people were going to barge in and disturb her peace and quiet, they could at least get straight to the point.

"I presume this is an emergency?" The girl nodded. "Well, let's go. You can tell me about it on the way."

Tsunade swept the breathless girl out of the room and down the corridor. "Well, what is it then?" she was getting a bit impatient now. The girls flinched a bit, and Tsunade wished she could keep her temper in check a bit better. She was fed up of always getting that sort of reaction from people.

"Hai, Tsunade-sama! It's Hatake-san. He's out of bed and he won't listen to anyone."

Tsunade sighed. She really wasn't in the mood for Kakashi being difficult. It was a rare occurrence, but when he did decide to act up he wouldn't listen to anyone of lower rank than himself - which for the last twenty years or more had meant he would only listen to the Hokage. Oddly enough, in recent years he had started to listen to Sakura as well, and Tsunade was inordinately glad of that.

She didn't say anything, and just followed the girl to a room located at the corner of the fifth floor, not far from her own office. On reaching the door she dismissed the nurses who were hanging around just inside the room. There was no sign of Kakashi, but she hadn't expected there to be.

Closing the door behind the last nurse to leave, Tsunade glanced around, trying to get some indication of where the patient had disappeared to this time. A look at his paperwork told her he shouldn't have been able to move around yet, but that really meant nothing when it came to high-level shinobi, so she fully expected Kakashi to have taken off out of the window and gone home.

But as she approached one of the windows she heard the shower running, and paused to check the small en-suite bathroom. She reached out with her senses, but couldn't feel any chakra inside, or hear anything but the running of the water. However, the way the water sounded told her that it was falling on something - most likely a body - rather than flowing straight down the drain.

Opening the door slowly, Tsunade made sure to make her presence known by making her chakra as noticeable as she could. She pushed the door fully open before she entered, to give Kakashi more warning if he was inside.

There was still no sound other than the water falling, so she stuck her head around the door. She hadn't been surprised that Kakashi might have wanted to take a shower, but what she saw inside was a surprise indeed.

A figure was slumped at the base of the shower, barely visible through the steam in the room. The room was stiflingly humid, and Tsunade could feel the heat coming from the shower as she drew closer to it.

The figure didn't seem to be moving, and Tsunade could see a substantial amount of what looked like blood pooling in the base of the shower before being swept down the drain. Alarmed, she wrenched open the glass door and pulled Kakashi out of the scalding water onto the floor of the bathroom.

In spite of the heat he was shivering, so she grabbed a towel and wrapped it around him, pushing chakra into his back through the towel to start healing the scalds caused by the almost boiling water of the shower.

She reached up to turn it off, noticing that the temperature was set to maximum. She shook her head, ignoring the blood, and returned to the man on the floor, who aside from the shaking hadn't moved at all.

"You idiot" she whispered, putting her arms around him and pulling him close to her side. "What were you thinking? I'm going to move you now, okay?"

He didn't respond. Tsunade slipped her strong arms beneath Kakashi's back and legs, and lifted him gently from the floor.

"Dammit you're heavy" she breathed as she placed him carefully on the bed. He still maintained complete control over his chakra, but hadn't offered any signs that he even knew she was there. Tsunade had seen Kakashi go through a lot, but she had never seen him like this. If he didn't want to talk, he would usually be calmly dismissive or, very occasionally, fiercely angry. But he had always in the past been very much mentally present and alert, no matter what may have happened. He had certainly never disappeared into another world like this before.

She pulled back the big towel to inspect his body for scalding, but what she saw was certainly not what she had expected. His arms, chest and thighs were scratched to pieces in such a way that it looked as though he had been scratching furiously at his own skin. She grabbed his hand to confirm it, and sure enough there was blood under his finger nails.

"But why?" she wondered. She had seen this type of behaviour before in victims of torture and sexual abuse, but found it hard to imagine Kakashi acting this way. He had always been far stronger than that, she had thought.

As she began to heal the raw skin on his chest Kakashi stirred. He looked at her with a confused eye, and the first words out of his mouth were not what Tsunade would have expected either.

"Where is Sakura?" he asked quietly.

Then he looked down at what she was doing.

"What happened? Why am I wet?" Tsunade could see he was trying to hold it in, but panic was clearly detectable in his face and voice.

She rarely saw his face without the mask, and always found it difficult to watch the fluid way expressions danced across his features. She always forgot just how expressive his face was.

"Kakashi, it's all right. I'm here." she pointedly ignored his questions. "I need you to show me what happened to you on your last mission, Kakashi. Can you do that?"

He stared at her blankly for a moment, then fear, anger, pain, and finally an expression which told of the most terrible shame passed over his face in a matter of seconds as he realised what she meant.

He nodded, and his face fell back into his usual paradoxical expression of attentive boredom as he met her gaze. "I'll try, Tsunade-sama. I think I've regained enough chakra."

Tsunade felt a huge swell of relief that he had managed to overcome his emotions. Kakashi was always strong, infallible, always had an answer, and it kept her going. To see him in such a state was almost enough to make her want to consider retiring. She had never really noticed how important he was to her and to the Village until he had been killed by Pain. When she had learned through Katsuyu that he had given his life to protect Chouji she had felt so angry. That _Kakashi_ could be killed was something she hadn't considered. Just like Jiraiya. Just like Sarutobi. They were supposed to be legends, and legends weren't supposed to just die like that. She knew it was stupid, but something in her refused to believe that she could lose another person she cared about. To see Kakashi in such a vulnerable state was too difficult to bear. Kakashi who's strength of will had kept her going through the hard times of the war against Madara, and who's seemingly boundless wisdom had so often guided her when she had felt lost in her role as Hokage. She thought it would be easier if he died rather than lose his mind, and if he did, she didn't think she could help him. It just wasn't something she could face.

So to see him regain his calm demeanour was a massive relief, even though Tsunade knew that what he was about to show her must be pretty horrific to have left him in such as state.

She continued healing his scratches in silence. It was a good thing he was still so physically weak or he would have done himself serious damage.

As it was, she used her chakra to kick-start the healing process then wrapped the injuries in antiseptic bandages. Kakashi waited until she had finished before saying anything else.

"Tsunade-sama. I'm sorry about that. I don't know what happened. I've just been having a few bad dreams and I think I must have started sleep-walking, perhaps, heh heh..." he laughed dryly and trailed off. Tsunade knew that if he had been able to he would have been rubbing at the back of his neck with one hand in his classic sign of discomfort. She wondered how he had managed to get to the shower at all in the state he was in. She could feel barely any chakra from him even now he had released his tight control over it, so she knew moving should have been virtually impossible.

"So, do you want me to show you it now?" Kakashi sounded resigned and weary, and Tsunade could tell he wanted to get it over with,.

"It's probably for the best. But don't strain yourself if it's too much for you right now. You know your own body better than anyone, so I don't need to tell you to stop before you drain yourself, but please be careful, okay?" She looked at him sternly, but she couldn't keep it up at the sight of his gentle, worried face, and her frown slipped into a concerned smile. "How do you want me to sit?"

After a few moments spent considering the best way to go about the procedure, Kakashi finally gave his answer.

"It's troublesome, but please could you help me onto my side, and then lie down facing me?"

She looked at him questioningly, one eyebrow raised demanding an explanation.

"Well, if I sit upright, you'll have to straddle my lap to look into my eye, and that won't work as you'll have nothing to lean on when you lose control of your body. I can't hold you up like this." He gestured very slightly with his almost useless hands. "And I can't face you head-on if you sit in the chair. I can't see another way to make it work, Tsunade-sama, I'm sorry."

She nodded in understanding. After all, if it was compromising to have someone walk in on them both lying on the bed, it was far worse to be found sitting on Kakashi's lap, gazing deeply into his eyes, for goodness sake! Tsunade really didn't need those sorts of rumours going around.

"Well, let's get it done then, if you're sure you're ready, Kakashi?"

He offered her a small smile, which she took as confirmation, so she rolled him over and shifted him to one side of the bed before climbing on herself, so they lay face to face. She was a little surprised when Kakashi, with an obviously huge effort, put a hand on the back of her head in what felt like an intimate gesture. She had never done this before, and started to feel apprehensive as his grip on her head tightened.

"You'll need to take the bandage off my eye first" he said quietly. Tsunade reached up and did just that, pealing away the thick gauze dressing to reveal that bright, startling eye. Kakashi breathed in sharply as it was uncovered, as it started stealing his chakra immediately. The sharingan had always frightened Tsunade a little bit as a girl, and it still took her a moment before she was able to look at it.

Kakashi's eye was really quite beautiful up close. It was a very deep scarlet colour, the purest red she had ever seen, flecked with burgundy and orange. The way the black tomoe swirled around the iris was striking and almost hypnotic...

By the time Tsunade realised that it _was_ in fact hypnotic, she was already under the power of the eye, and found herself in a dark, damp-smelling place. She looked around herself cautiously. She was lying on a thin mattress on the floor of a small room. The concrete walls dripped with rust and damp and green slime-like algae, and the smell of the place was revolting, like an open sewer. When she tried to get up, Tsunade found that her body was secured to the ground, seemingly through the mattress, with a number of tight straps placed at various points over her legs and body.

She took a moment to marvel at the detail of the sharingan's illusion. She had never for a moment thought it could feel so real, and it was hard to remember that she was not really tied up in a dank room somewhere, but was actually lying on Kakashi's comfortable hospital bed in Konoha. Her head lifted up a little bit without her doing anything, so she took the chance to look down at her body.

Or rather, she looked down at Kakashi's long, slim body. It was a distinctly strange sensation, to have no control over your body, and then to discover that it is not your body at all, but someone else's. He was dressed in a pale blue thigh-length robe, secured at the waist with a black cord.

Kakashi must have been feeding her a little bit of sensation at a time, as now along with the sight and smell came a feeling of intense cold as an icy breeze blew through the room. With it came the first sounds she had heard in the illusion. She could hear distant screams and clangs, and much closer, loud footsteps which seemed to be approaching. She could taste now, as well, and tasted something bitter and unpleasant, like old vomit, in her mouth.

Along with the five senses, Tsunade was surprised to feel emotions that she knew were not her own. Her curiosity was overpowered by a strong sense of foreboding and fear, and she knew something horrible was about to happen. She knew the footsteps belonged to a man who was coming for her. he knew that he was coming to question her again, and then when she gave nothing away, he was going to have his way with her, as he had several times already.

All of a sudden, all the sensations intensified.

The smell became so strong she wanted to throw up, and the taste of vomit became overpowering.

Her - Kakashi's - body began to shiver with the cold, and she noticed pain for the first time. An intense, white-hot pain which seemed to radiate in her rear, and spread down to her thighs and up to her stomach. And the connotations that pain carried with it increased her urge to be sick. She tried to force the feelings down, but because they were neither her own feelings, nor were they real, she cold not force them away.

The illusory pain and intense sensations lasted only for a few seconds, and when they ceased, Tsunade was able to comprehend that Kakashi was only giving her a small taste of what he had been through. He didn't want her to feel the pain that he had felt, but he had to show her it in order that she could fully understand. So he gave her only a tiny fraction of what he had endured.

The fear and horrible anticipation grew stronger, and Tsunade's own thoughts were pushed aside by Kakashi's thoughts and feelings. His brain seemed to be able to run on several different levels at one time which was confusing to Tsunade, but it wasn't long before she was able to more or less follow them all.

On one level was pure fear and dread and thoughts of the approaching man and what he was going to do to him. Another simultaneous thought process was concerned about the team left outside, and was wondering whether they had survived; running through various different scenarios involving Kakashi's three teammates. A third stream was considering the possibility of escape, and was preparing to spring the moment he was released from the bonds.

Yet another thought process was thinking of Konoha. This one was peaceful, and Tsunade found herself hearing this one more loudly than the others as the footsteps approached, agonisingly slowly. It was as though this voice was trying to drown out the others although the useful escape thought stream was still there, trying to reason a way to get out of this situation.

As the door opened, a sudden change occurred. Tsunade was no longer conscious of the fear, or the peaceful thoughts, as the concern for Kakashi's teammates and plans for escape filled her mind for a moment.

Tsunade, in the small part of her own thoughts that she could still focus on, was impressed by Kakashi's ability to compartmentalise his fear, and to focus on what was most useful to the current situation.

But as the door creaked open and a huge man entered the room, followed by two even larger men, all other thoughts were wiped out by an intense urge to kill this man. To rip his throat out with her teeth.

Tsunade wanted nothing more than to get close to this monster of a man and tear him to shreds for what he had done to that village.

She had only a millisecond to wonder "what village?" before that violent part of Kakashi's mind took over again and his body strained against the straps desperately, needing to taste that man's blood.

She snarled and the man backed up a little at the vicious killing intent she - Kakashi - was emitting.

This man had long, dark hair and dark golden skin, and wore in a gold robe with a silver sash, which glittered strangely in the sliver of light shining through the doorway. The two lackeys were dressed in short silver tunics with black sashes, similar to Kakashi's outfit. The gold man looked powerful, although not as powerful as Kakashi was.

She could feel the raw power of Kakashi's body, and it was exhilarating. Although Tsunade knew she was stronger than he was, she also knew that a lot of it came from her immense chakra, and that without her chakra she was nowhere near as strong physically. But it wasn't just physical strength she could feel. There was something else flowing below the surface. It wasn't his chakra. She could feel that clearly. It was something deep down within him, like an animal instinct or bloodlust, and she felt almost unstoppable.

A strange, very deep growl rose in her throat. It felt as though it came straight from that strange, primal centre of Kakashi's being.

The man made a move forward, laughing at the trussed up beast on the floor.

"Ha. You may be strong, dog, but even you can't touch me when I have you like this."

The man leaned down and put his face very close to hers. Tsunade wanted to snap out at him, but Kakashi's technique only allowed her to do what he had done, and she felt him restrain himself from biting the man's nose.

"Untie him". The man issued his order with a wave of his big, dark hand.

The two silver grunts came forward cautiously and paused to look questioningly at their master before they did anything.

"What are you waiting for? I said untie him." The leader didn't have very much patience, evidently.

The two giants bent to untie the straps covering Kakashi's body, and as they came into contact with his skin to release the last two straps, Tsunade felt a sudden pulse, like an electrical discharge, surge through his arms, concentrating at the points where the men were touching Kakashi.

Both men were thrown back violently against the walls.

They didn't get back up.

Tsunade looked on through Kakashi's eye in shock. She had no idea he was that powerful.

Now Kakashi was free, she instinctively tried to move his body to attempt an escape, but it didn;t respond to her commands. When he did try to move, she felt that pain again.

An oddly masculine cry came out of her mouth as she tried to stand, and the big man pushed Kakashi back down again without trouble.

Tsunade could feel how weak Kakashi's body felt now. Adrenaline had given him the strength to try to get up, and he still seemed to have about half of his chakra, but the sheer pain had been more than he could push through.

Tsunade could feel the fear coming back alongside the animal rage, as the big man bent down and dragged Kakashi up to a sitting position.

"I was going to ask you nicely to tell me about your mission, little Copy Ninja, but you've really blown it now. Those were my best men. I guess I'll just have to start with the punishment, wont I?"

He brandished a long strip of leather, flicking it from side to side tauntingly. As it caught the light, Tsunade could see it was studded with sharp barbs. He flicked it back and without warning brought it down across Kakashi's legs just below the bottom of the robe. The barbs caught in the skin as he pulled it back, and Tsunade felt a lesser version of the pain that Kakashi would have experienced.

The man smiled crookedly, then bent in very close - far too close. Tsunade could vividly smell his rancid breath as he actually kissed Kakashi on the lips, running his tongue disgustingly over his cheek as he pulled away.

"You're so pretty it's hard to resist you," the man whispered huskily. "You look just like your mother."

Without warning, the man ripped off Kakashi's robe and flipped him onto his stomach. Tsunade knew now what was coming, although she had been hoping for almost anything else. She knew Kakashi could handle physical pain. He had been tortured several times and had always come back from it seemingly okay. But this was different. She knew that. And what did that comment about his mother mean?

Tsunade growled again, desperately trying to twist away from the man's grip, as she felt that sickening fear and nausea creeping up her throat again. This time, as that animal rage built up inside of her, she forgot that this wasn't her body, that this was just an illusion.

She was there in that room, struggling desperately against her assailant. But the man was too strong, and each time she struggled and writhed, he brought that barbed whip down onto her back or shoulders, or the bottom of her feet and it hurt.

He soon seemed to get sick of her squirming about, and grabbed at her hips harshly. Just as she felt that electrical chakra start to build up again, this time in her hips, the man behind her chuckled.

"Oh no you don't" came his hateful voice, and something cold stung her upper arm briefly before, a few seconds later, her whole body went limp.

She could still feel everything though. Every touch of the man's rough hands as he roughly pulled her onto her knees, every hot, clammy breath he let out over her shoulder and cheek. And worst of all, every twitch of his disgustingly hot and sweaty body as it pushed and flapped against her backside. She anticipated what was coming next, and felt her body shudder violently as she tried to pull away, but she was powerless to even move...

Then suddenly, without any warning at all, Tsunade was lying on something soft, looking into the most beautiful grey eye she had ever seen. She stared for a long time, unmoving, completely disoriented. What had just happened?

"Tsunade-sama?" A soft, low voice broke through her confusion, and she focused on the face that contained that dark eye.

"Kakashi?" she looked at him feeling totally lost, but hugely relieved at the same time.

"Yes" he breathed softly. "It's over, Tsunade-sama. I don't have enough chakra, and I... well. I didn't want to go any further." She looked at him questioningly for a moment. He seemed to take it the wrong way, as he broke with her gaze and spoke very quietly.

"Please don't make me show you, Tsunade-sama. You know what happened next."

Tsunade felt tears pricking at her eyes. She would never push him to reveal anything unnecessarily painful like that. She couldn't believe what she had just experienced. It was... unreal. She felt rather absent, detached from reality. As though she had really just been through that. She didn't feel much like moving from where she was really, but she wanted to speak to the rest of Kakashi's team as soon as possible. She had given them a few days off before she had asked for their reports, but in light of what she had just experienced she wanted to get their versions of events as soon as possible.

"It's okay, Kakashi. It's okay. You don;t have to show me any more. I understand. Thank you."

Tsunade went to move away but Kakashi's grip on the back of her head kept her in place, and he didn't seem to want to let go. She looked at him pointedly, and he looked back plaintively, an indescribable look on his face, as though he was fighting with himself. She waited for him to do something.

When he spoke, his voice was broken and so soft Tsunade barely heard it.

"Please... stay a while?"

She looked into that sad grey eye that had seen far too much, and simply couldn't say no. Kakashi never asked for anything. The least he deserved was a little time and a little comfort. She put her arms around him and pulled his grey head against her chest, stroking his hair and back as he kept his grip on the back of her head.

* * *

><p>Sakura and her mother had exhausted the small ream of papers Sakura had taken home, so at around ten in the morning, as soon as they had eaten breakfast, she went back to her shishou's office to get more. Sakura didn't think Tsunade-shishou should be there, as it was her day to be at the hospital, and to her delight she was correct.<p>

Although she took more records home, Sakura also photocopied the courtroom files relating to Kakashi's horrendous injuries as a genin so she cold re-read them later. She wanted to know the details of the case, but her mother thought it was unhealthy to go into everything in depth. She thought Sakura should just skim-read the files to pick out the main events that could have shaped her sensei's life, rather than pore over every small detail of his medical record. But Sakura wanted to read everything. She lived for the details. But she was happy to come back to those later. She was enjoying the rare time spent with her mother, and didn't want to spoil it, so she gabbed herself the next set of papers and went home for another bonding session.

On the walk home she wondered what would be in the next set of documents. She knew the year that Kakashi's father, the White Fang, had died, and knew that he would have been seven or eight, so it should be coming up soon. She hoped, with a sick sought of excitement, that it would be within the files in her satchel.


End file.
